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Eight free training-camp practices will be open to the public, the 49ers announced Wednesday. Season ticket holders will get a e-mail from the team and instructions for registering online starting Wednesday. Tickets for the general public will be available Friday by registering at 49ers.com.

Tickets are limited to 3,000 per practice and the festivities will include interactive football drills and games, appearances by Sourdough Sam and the 49ers’ cheerleaders and autograph sessions with players. The practices are: Saturday, July 26 (9-10:30 a.m.), Sunday, July 27 (9-10:30 a.m. and 4-5:30 p.m.), Monday, July 28 (4-5:30 p.m.), Wednesday, July 30 (4-5:30 p.m.), Friday, August 1 (4-5:30 p.m.), Saturday, August 2 (9-10:30 a.m.) and Sunday, August 3 (4-5:30 p.m.). The first day is already sold out.

Before we go to the tight end assessment, a few notes in response to yesterday’s posts. After cross-referencing with Profootballreference.com, ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia, and NFL play-by-play books, Jerry Rice never started as a wide receiver for the 49ers even after Terrell Owens’ arrival. Now he may have been moved to wide receiver from flanker during the games, but he was always listed as a flanker in his 16 seasons with the team.

Rice was a Seahawk but he was also a Bronco for a brief time before retiring in training camp.

TIGHT END

As many of you have noted, the tight ends could be the engine of the 49ers’ receiving game if offensive coordinator Mike Martz decides to make tight end a centerpiece, which is something he’s never done in his 12 seasons as an offensive coordinator or head coach.

Vernon Davis could be the 49ers’ main target.

Ernie Conwell in 2001 caught 38 passes the highest production ever for a Martz tight end. Vernon Davis is no Conwell, as 52 catches last year prove. Martz has said he likes Davis and cohort Delanie Walker and said he could do a lot of things with them in his offense.

When Davis and Walker, and to a lesser degree, Billy Bajema, compete in training camp, they won’t do so to win playing time from one another. They’ll be auditioning as a group to take passes away from the wide receivers and running backs, as Martz assesses what he has in his receiving options.

VERNON DAVIS

Much of Martz’s focus will center on Davis. Never has a player in my opinion been so divorced from his statistics. According to footballoutsiders.com, he caught 61 percent of the passes thrown his way, with four drops, but 52 receptions is productive for any tight end in his second year.

However, Davis made mistakes at crucial times, like the debatable fumble in Pittsburgh that turned the game around, like his proclivity to run tentative routes, forget the snap count, lineup wrong and jump offsides. He led the 49ers in penalties with nine.

Davis’s struggles with the playbook will only increase with Martz. While tight ends don’t get much action with Martz, they are used as an agent of deception. Much like former 49ers offensive coordinator Norv Turner, Martz constantly motions and no player motions more than the tight end, often shifting two or three times before the snap.

Davis will have to get all of this down before reading the defense and adjusting his route accordingly, and all this from a player (and he’s not the only one) who last year would ask the quarterback to repeat plays in the huddle. If Davis can’t or doesn’t step up his knowledge, Walker could seriously eat into his playing time.

Martz might have already sent Davis a message by saying how much he likes Walker and by saying that Walker could add much to the offense.

But Martz also can unlock potential. He has done it with quarterbacks – Kurt Warner, Trent Green, and Marc Bulger were unheard of before they met Martz. Mike Furry played safety for the Rams in 2005; in 2006 he caught 98 passes with Detroit after Martz converted him to receiver.

DELANIE WALKER

Martz’s transformative powers could work on Walker. He recently re-upped with the 49ers, so Martz and the coaches see something there.

Possibly more diligent with the playbook than Davis, it nevertheless took time for Walker to become effective last season. He came on at the end of the season after digesting the shifts and learning to read a defense. He was also used as a slot receiver often.

Walker, a former receiver, can split out, line up as a tradition tight end and even line up as a fullback or H-back. That’s a lot of options for Martz.

BILLY BAJEMA

The blocking tight end missed games last year with a high ankle sprain and then had trouble working his way back into the lineup. Maybe not so coincidentally, the 49ers running game dipped compared to the year before.

Bajema and Davis are among the rare tight ends who can block a defensive end effectively. Bajema can also line up as a fullback. Bajema has never been much of a receiver in games, but in practice he doesn’t look half bad.

J.J. Finley

Joe Jon Finley threw for over 1,626 yards as a senior, ran for another 897 yards and scored nine touchdown in leading his Brownwood, TX high school team to the district title. He was all-league as a sophomore tight end, something he returned to as an Oklahoma Sooner.

At 6-6, 251, he has the size to make it happen in the red zone but will nevertheless be challenged to make the team. His best chance is to block like a demon and knock Bajema off the roster.

COOPER WALLACE

He left Auburn as the Tigers leading receiver with 63 catches for 839 yards and four scores. Since then, the Nashville native has knocked around the league spending time with Chicago, Tennessee and Cincinnati before signing with San Francisco in the off-season.